Beneath Rain
by Runawaymetaphor
Summary: Collection of post-Endgame vignettes about our heroes finding home. Stories will feature a healthy amount of the two characters cited, but all will make appearances.
1. I

**Beneath Rain**

_"How often have I lain beneath rain on a strange roof, thinking of home."_

-William Faulkner_  
_

* * *

**I.**

When the lift doors open onto the bridge, Tom is caught off guard by the complete silence there. Tuvok has command, the others on shift all junior officers- people who were once young and green and terrified, the way Harry used to be.

They're not so young now. Far from green. But perhaps still a little scared?

_Scared. _

That's about how Tom feels. And, understandably, filled with happiness, too. It's just that tied up in a knot with all the joy of his newborn baby, the relief of being three hours out from Earth, is fear. Complete terror, really.

But this last feeling Tom tries to push away, failing a little as he takes in each officer's look of trepidation.

"Lieutenant," Tuvok nods, in what has to be the Vulcan approximation of warmth. "I have yet to extend my personal congratulations."

"Thanks," Tom replies, embarrassed when his voice catches a little. Is he really getting all mushy at the mere mention of Miral? "The Captain asked me to come to her Ready Room," he adds, clearing his throat. "So I think I'll just…"

Tom's awkward, vague gesture goes without comment from Tuvok, the pilot inwardly chiding himself as he chimes at Janeway's door.

_What has gotten into me tonight? Hold it together, Paris._

He enters to find the Captain in civvies rather than her uniform, her gaze transfixed on the paused image of an older woman, her grey hair pulled into a bun and a jacket tied tight around her.

"Tom," Janeway says, finally looking at the officer standing in front of her. She bid him entry, but it's obvious she's preoccupied. Her eyes a little glassy as she moves to dismiss the vid.

"Your mother?" Tom asks, making her pause the gesture that will send the image away.

"Yes," she sighs, sounding . . . a little unlike herself. "She commed a few hours ago, my sister too." Her eyes return to the screen, her finger soon tracing the edges of it. "It's apparently been pouring rain in Indiana, not cold enough to snow. . . I could hear it on the comm line. The sound of the water hitting the roof, sliding down the porch."

"Not a sound you ever get on a ship," Tom notes, perching a little on her desk.

It's strange that it's only something he misses now that he thinks about it. Remembers, with complete clarity, how it felt to listen to the rain in bed, growing up in his parents' house in Marin.

"I didn't realize how much I missed it," the Captain confesses. And as the sound of Janeway's slightly wobbly voice finds him, Tom has to desperately fight the pressure building up behind his eyes.

He would normally change the subject, bring up the paperwork from Auckland they both need to complete before he can be legally deemed a free man. But as he sits there, staring at the vid of Janeway's mother, a bay window in view behind the woman with a rain-logged landscape barely visible, Tom begins to shake, tears pooling in his eyes.

"I can't do this," he says, plucking his pips off and dropping them on her desk.

"Tom?" Janeway asks, now standing up in alarm. "_Tom_, what can't you do?"

"I can't cry in here," he begins, tears already streaming. "Not _in here_, and wearing _these_."

His apparent conflict is both a tribute to all that he's achieved and a reflection (unexpected and yet terribly appropriate) of what Janeway herself feels. And as Paris folds in, jagged sobs of relief and fear overtaking him, his Captain stands beside him, her own face quickly crumpling.

The hand she places on his arm trembles with seven years worth of hope and burden.

. . . . .


	2. II

**II.**

* * *

_"Not everything gets a happy ending, Harry."_

It's something Tom said to him years ago, although exactly when, Harry can't remember. And yet, he can still hear Tom's voice clearly (that wariness and fatigue he once mistook for self-centered bitterness) as he now stands outside an apartment in San Francisco, holding a trembling woman who clutches him like he might again disappear.

"I can't believe you're really here," Libby says, and Harry closes eyes. Tries to memorize everything about the way her arms feel, the sound of her voice against his neck.

"It's me," he says. "I'm really here."

Libby's live-in boyfriend appears a few meters from the door's threshold. And then, diplomatically, retreats from view, once he sees who their unexpected guest is.

"I should have commed before I came over. But I just needed- I wanted to see you in person."

"Harry... I'm so sorry-"

"It's alright," he interrupts. "Seven years is a long time. I don't blame you."

At this Libby, pulls back, her eyes filled with tears she won't allow herself to selfishly shed in front of him.

"I didn't know- we thought you were dead for so long! I thought- _God._ Harry, I was _a wreck,_ for such a long time without you."

It's the kind of thing that would be a consolation to a man with a little less pain of his own under his belt, or else a smaller capacity for compassion.

"I'm glad you found someone who makes you happy," he says. And, to his credit, genuinely means it.

It's just that emotions are complicated things. It being possible to be happy for someone even when your own heart is being torn out in the exact same moment.

"I should go," he finally manages, when the pain of their silence overtakes its comfort.

"I expect to see you," Libby rushes to say. "You can come over for dinner. Introduce me to your famous shipmates?"

"It's good to see you, Libby," Harry says instead, not commenting on the invitation.

Maybe, in time, those things will be possibilities. But right now they're bad ideas all around.

"Harry," Libby calls, when he's halfway down the hall. "You look good. I think the Delta Quadrant suited you."

In a way, Harry thinks she's right. He just wishes it hadn't cost him the first woman he ever loved.

"Maybe," he forces a smile. Then disappears into the building's turbolift.

. . . . .

The temporary housing he's been assigned is several kilometers away, but Harry still walks the whole way back from seeing Libby.

It's one of those magical, cloudless San Francisco afternoons, though the streets are still wet from a morning of soaking rain. All of the ships overhead glimmer with sunlight, and the trees smell lush and promising.

None of it really cheers him up, but when he gets to the grounds of his own building, he's hard-pressed not feel a little better.

"How'd it go?" Tom asks Harry, before making a face at the infant daughter he's carefully laid out on a blanket in the grass.

"As well as a wiser man would have expected," Harry sighs, coming to join Tom in his little, make-shift camp.

"That bad?"

"It is what it is," Harry shakes his head. "Not everything gets a happy ending."

Tom's head shoots up here, his blue eyes watching as Harry lets Miral grab onto his finger, her tiny hand twisting a small smile from the distraught man's face.

"Sometimes that's true," Tom says carefully. "Other times the happy endings we get aren't the ones we saw coming, back when things began."

As if on cue, Miral gurgles, her father's face lighting up with joy. And though Harry isn't nearly dense enough to miss Tom's point, it's a little early for him to go embracing this particular brand of optimism.

"Is this weather going to hold?" he asks Tom instead. Then reclines lazily, his elbows off the blanket.

"No idea," Tom replies. "I would assume we'll get more rain."

"I wouldn't mind that," Harry says, lying flat on with hands tucked under his head.

He closes his eyes, surrounded by the sound of Tom and Miral, and the smell of dewy grass.

. . . . .


	3. III

**III.**

* * *

_"It's been like this for years, Phebes! Is it _ever_ going to be about us again? Even just once?"_

_"Kathryn's been back a month, Brian! What do you want me to do? Kiss her hello and then take off? I haven't seen her for _seven years!_" _

_"Well, maybe if you cared as much about this marriage as you did your missing sister, I wouldn't find myself having to fight for a minute of your time."_

As the argument between her sister and her brother-in-law crests upstairs, Kathryn sips her tea quietly in the dining room, sitting opposite her mother, Gretchen.

"It's not about you, dear," Gretchen says finally, and mostly into her tea cup. Then reaches across and squeezes her oldest daughter's hand.

Kathryn doesn't say anything. Unsure, for one, whether this true, but also a little disoriented by everything that's changed in her absence.

When she left to find Chakotay's ship, Phoebe and Brian were still newlyweds. Not as sickeningly affection as most, given that they'd dated on and off for five years. But happy all the same, and desperately in love.

Now it seems the two of them can barely be in a room together for twenty minutes before an argument erupts. Or else they fall into a thorny silence, which everyone else awkwardly rushes to fill.

Two minutes later, Brian storms down the stairs and out the front door, Phoebe's softer footsteps sounding a few moments later on the landing.

"Do we have any coffee?" the youngest Janeway asks tiredly when she enters the room. Then grabs for her sister's mug.

"I'll put some on," Gretchen says, watching Phoebe's nose wrinkle in distaste after sipping the lukewarm chamomile.

"Since when do you drink tea?" Phoebe demands, if without rancor, slipping into the warm seat her mother's vacated.

"Even coffee can be dangerous in the Delta Quadrant," Kathryn smirks.

"Your Mister Neelix?" Phoebe guesses.

"You've heard stories, I see."

"Your Commander Chakotay commed this morning while you were out," Phoebe laughs a little. "He may have regaled Mom and I with a few tales about your cook's more _creative_ attempts to please the Captain's palate."

"Well. Neelix could always be counted on to strike out in new directions," Kathryn allows. Then murmurs, a moment later, "wonder what Chakotay needed."

"Do you?" Phoebe asks. "Wonder, I mean?"

"I wonder about a lot of things," Kathryn shakes her head. "Some things more than I should."

"Want to talk about it?"

"Chakotay?" Kathryn questions, appearing to weigh her sister's offer. "No. . . No, I don't want to talk about it."

"Sure?" Phoebe asks softly.

"I'm sure," Kathryn nods. "If only because I have absolutely no idea what to say."

"Fair enough."

"Do you want to talk about this thing with Brian?"

"No," Phoebe says immediately, and making a frustrated face.

"Sure?"

"Positive," Phoebe chuckles mirthlessly, "if only because I'm so damn sick of talking about it _with him_."

"I'm sorry," Kathryn begins. "I know that. . . I can't imagine the amount of stress my being gone put on you and Mom."

"Hey," Phoebe shakes her head. "Whatever Bri and I argue about, this isn't about you. This about _us, _whatever it is that changed the way we relate to one another." She adds, pointedly, upon seeing her sister's dubious expression, "this isn't your responsibility, Captain Janeway."

Kathryn wants to believe her. Wants to think that the 'whatever it is' wasn't the stress of believing her dead, only to find she was alive, on the other side of the galaxy, and in constant peril.

It's just that she's spent the last seven years of her life feeling responsible for everything- _everything_. And even though she's been gone a long time, she can't help but think that her mother's hair is far whiter than it should be, and that Phoebe is too young to look so, so tired.

"Coffee's ready," Gretchen calls, apparently from the front room, and Phoebe and Kathryn slowly rise to join her.

They find two steaming mugs on the coffee table in front of the couch, Gretchen already perched in her late husband's favorite chair, an old afghan pulled down across her lap.

Kathryn settles into the center of the couch, Phoebe beside her, and looks out the bay window in front of them as she takes her first, steamy sip.

The rain she heard over the comm line to _Voyager_ is now only a memory, temperatures in Indiana dipping well below freezing more than two weeks ago; the rain turning into sleet and freezing rain, and then, finally, snow. A dangerous and nasty ice storm downed trees, only the night before.

"Supposed to get even colder," Gretchen murmurs, Phoebe making a humming sound in response.

"Hope Brian didn't go too far out," Kathryn says, "nothing beyond the front and back walkways have been properly cleared."

"He'll be fine," Phoebe sighs, resting her head against her sister's shoulder.

Kathryn can't tell whether the response is confidence or just disinterest. She fills her mouth with coffee to avoid having to fill the stretching silence.

"Did you miss the snow, Katie?" her mother asks her. And cradling her coffee as she stares out at the barren landscape, Kathryn tries to decide what the answer is.

"I missed autumn," she says softly, "and I daydreamed all the time about spring. Winter I guess I can take or leave. . . Though hot coffee does taste better when staring out at snow."

"Hear, hear," Phoebe murmurs, snuggling deeper into the couch and letting out a little, contented sigh.

Kathryn rests her chin atop her sister's head. Holds her warm mug even closer.

. . . . .


	4. IV

**IV. **

* * *

"I believe I'll attempt your sister's recipe for mushroom soup," Seven announces, coming into the den of the small house they've been given to use during their stay on Dorvan V.

At the sound of her voice behind him, Chakotay abruptly turns off the comm screen into which he'd been staring.

"I apologize for interrupting," she begins, her voice now drained of her characteristic confidence. "If you're too absorbed for dinner-"

"No," Chakotay interrupts. "No. I was just trying to get a hold of someone, without much success I'm afraid." He stands, his eyes now cast away from her and his left hand tugging slightly at his ear. "Mushroom soup sounds good. Want some help in the kitchen?"

Actually, she doesn't.

Cooking is still a new skill set for her and she finds it more beneficial to do things without Chakotay's help. He has a habit of stepping in quickly when she's about to commit a culinary misstep. Something she judged efficient- until she realized how much more she learned from actually the mistakes herself. (One is much more likely to appreciate the difference between 'boil' and 'simmer', for example, after straining one's jaw on a bit of dried out beef floating in a hurriedly prepared stew.)

"I will accept the aid of a capable sous chef," Seven replies finally, her full lips upturning in the hint of a smile.

Allowing his help is a small compromise. One that she makes entirely within herself.

It's an internal process at which she's getting more and more adept.

They move to the kitchen, conversing about their respective afternoons as they navigate the home's open rooms. She's finally sent her formal acceptance to the Daystrom Institute an hour earlier, after weeks of hesitation regarding their relentless courting of her.

And Chakotay has spent his day meeting with Dorvan's governing council, doing what he can to advise them on the planet's difficult road to resettlement, post-Cardassian occupation, and back under the control of the same Federation that ceded control of the solar system to the Cardassian Union only a decade earlier.

"I don't know that their expectations are realistic," Chakotay sighs. "But I'd like to think they've listened to at least _some _of what I've had to say."

"They would be unwise to disregard your counsel," she offers, and he briefly touches her shoulder in thanks.

"So," he says, now looking at the groceries on the kitchen counter. "Find anything promising?"

"The mushrooms available were not of the highest quality," she concedes. "They are, however, adequate for soup."

"Hmm." He holds one grey cap up, inspecting it for himself. "Not the best," he agrees, "but not the worst, for this time of year."

"Certainly nothing Mister Paris would call an 'atrocity of Talaxian scale.' "

Her last comment earns a smirk from Chakotay, as he sets about preparing the vegetables. Tom and B'Elanna commed only the other day, boasting new vids of Miral.

Seven finds it oddly unsettling to think they won't observe Miral Paris' growth the same way they did Naomi Wildman's. More unsettling that she won't be getting to observe Naomi that closely anymore.

"I need to bring you back here after the dry season's over," Chakotay muses. And Seven watches as his knife slides easily through mushroom after mushroom; tries not to focus on the irregular size and shape of the resulting chunks.

"I don't find the heat as burdensome as you feared I may. . . Even if it _has _limited my selection of edible fungi."

"I guess the heat's not as punishing as I remember it being," Chakotay comments, already chuckling. "I can even stand the thought of eating hot soup."

"It isn't too late to prepare something else," she offers, now vaguely confused, but Chakotay shakes his head gently.

"Nope. You had me at my sister's recipe."

The conversation comes to a stop as Seven concentrates on mixing flour into milk, then puts the bowl aside until the mushrooms and aromatics finish their slow simmer.

"After we leave here. . ." Seven begins, "I would like to arrange a visit to Captain Janeway - before I begin my work at the Institute and transport to Rigel III."

Chakotay doesn't saying. Merely makes a noncommittal sound as he rearranges the mushrooms she's overcrowded in the pan.

"Would you like to join me?" Seven asks, as he stirs and stirs and stirs.

"If that's what you want."

His tone is amiable enough, but the response still confuses Seven. Because she's more than able to read a communications log, and thus knows that his several unsuccessful comm attempts have all been to the Janeway home in Indiana.

She understands that he would miss the person he considers his closest friend. Especially as she misses the same person, and with a depth and a ferocity she was wholly unprepared for.

But she doesn't understand why he would refuse to discuss his attempts to contact Janeway. Does he feel uncomfortable that he feels her absence?

She should _she_ feel uneasy that she feels the same?

"I definitely need to bring you back here," Chakotay says, giving her a dimpled smile. "If only so you can see how just a little rain transforms the whole landscape."

"I would be amenable to returning in a wetter season," Seven says, her side now flush with his.

"The lure of higher caliber fungi, huh?"

She saves herself from picking a suitably light reply by sliding a cooked mushroom into her mouth.

This was one of young Naomi's favorite stalling strategies, and something that Seven, in retrospect, now judges tactically astute of the child.

"Soup came out perfectly," Chakotay compliments later, when they're sitting down to eat.

"I cannot find a flaw," she says. Sounding in complete agreement.

But as they continue quietly eating, Seven considers the possibility that Chakotay was right after all.

Perhaps it's too oppressively dry and hot outside to be having soup for dinner.

. . .


	5. V

**V.**

* * *

It's only in passing moments that Samantha recognizes she should be more concerned about her marriage, the impact of being away from one's partner for more than seven years. Brief thoughts borne of quiet observation; a brand of contemplation wholly unrelated to spiking tempers and steadily ascending voices.

If she and Gresk haven't argued once since her return, it's only because arguments are the kind of activity reserved for couples who aren't constantly holding their breath; spouses whose attention occasionally passes to the state of their own relationship, their sole focus not being the near-obsessive preoccupation with the well-being of their child.

It isn't that Naomi isn't doing well, because, in most ways, she is. Natural explorer that she is (or has been forced to become), she's met with zeal these new sights of the Alpha Quadrant. Handled with the most diplomatic of smiles the overwhelming crush of Human and (far more numerous) Ktarian relatives who've clamored to embrace her, engage her in conversation.

The problem is that her father Gresk is treated to this same measured warmth that Naomi doles out to relative strangers. Five years of Sam talking to Naomi about the father on DS9 who loves her being no replacement for five years of intimacy-producing experiences with an actual father.

It's to be expected, and yet it's a further wound to Sam and Gresk. The Delta Quadrant robbed Naomi of having a father, and the Alpha Quadrant can do nothing to immediately right the years of absence.

It's also going to take longer than Gresk is hoping, Samantha thinks, as she sits in the back of the small transport vessel that's ferrying the three of them to Ktaris II, and watches her daughter look out at unfamiliar stars.

Naomi is a warm, expressive girl, but growing up on _Voyager_ has taught her to withhold complete trust as much as it's taught her the value of openness.

It will take years for her to hold her father in the same emotional regard as she holds her mother. Perhaps longer to get over the loss of those from _Voyager_ she continually asks for, Seven, Tom, and the Captain chief among.

To say nothing of the painful lilt that creeps into Naomi's voice whenever she tells stories of Neelix.

It's only when the transport vessel begins to descend into the Ktarian atmosphere that Sam tries to clear her head, spreads a smile across her face for the sake of the child who sits one seat in front of her.

"That's the southern continent," she says into Naomi's ear.

"People from all around the Federation come to ski there," Gresk adds, his arm wrapped loosely around Naomi's shoulder. "We can go next week if you're interested."

Naomi only nods, her eyes glued to the new vistas proffered by the viewport. She's one of three children on board the transport vessel, but she's the only one unphased by the steep descent.

"What's that?" Naomi asks a few minutes later, when they've entered the lower atmosphere and are just a few minutes shy of touching down on the north-east continent.

"What's what?" Sam says, putting her chin on her daughter's shoulder.

"You mean the _rain_?" Gresk asks, a bit incredulous, as she he watches his daughter's eyes go wide with interest.

Naomi has seen rain, of course. Played in holographic rain. Wandered in the precipitation of a half-dozen Delta Quadrant planets.

But as it happens, she's never seen rain falling around a runabout. Never witnessed the complicated geometric patterns produced by the combination of precipitation and innumerable fast moving vectors of displaced air.

Truth be told, it's been a while since Sam or Gresk have seen it either.

"It looks like a dance," Naomi pronounces, and presses two fingers to the window.

"It does," Gresk agrees, peering over her shoulder, "some big, complicated festival of water."

Naomi smiles at the description and settles a little deeper into her father's arm, both their sights still trained on the continually changing shapes and angles on the other side of the viewport.

And just for a moment, Samantha lets out the breath she's been holding.

* * *

_For E_.


End file.
